General Site Rules

Including profanity in your comments is against the rules. If your comment contains foul language, veiled or not, it could be flagged, and if it is flagged, it will be deleted.

Making fun of the dead, injured or humiliated is really, really, low; same goes for wishing harm or death on others

So low that we don not allow it on our site. Comments like these poke fun, ridicule or make light of someone who has died, been injured or already been publicly humiliated.

Also, comments that wish death or harm on others are juvenile, mean-spirited, and have no place on our site.

Personal attacks, taunts, name-calling, and threats have no place in civil discussion

We like civil discussion here, and we DO NOT appreciate it when people attempt to hijack civil discussions.

When you make a personal attack against another member in public, you are taking a discussion out of one of ideas and into one of personalities. You are also wasting the time and attention of those who are not involved in your battle. Calling another person names is a sure sign you have no arguments left to make -- DO NOT do it.

Bottom line: Keep your comments focused on the issues, not on other commenters or the subjects of stories.

Posting hate / stereotyping / intimidating speech makes this place a worse place to be

Comments that stereotype, intimidate or are hateful toward an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, or disability will be removed.

Stay relevant, please

Writing irrelevant comments is easy and fun for you, but boring and a waste of time for everyone else. Examples of such comments:

One that has little or nothing to do with the subject of the article.

One that has little or nothing to do with the current conversation.

Quoting offensive comments can set you up to be deleted yourself

This rule is tricky: If we delete a comment, and you have replied to that comment, to get rid of the offending comment we need to delete your comment as well. That means your excellent response will have to go. Paraphrase or refer to the poster in order to rebut those thoughts. Even better: Flag the comment you are replying to, and save yourself the time.

Take advantage of our private messaging functionality

If you have something to say, but it is something directed and specific to another member, instead of posting it for everyone, send them a PM instead.

DO NOT invade someone's privacy

Examples of comments that may invade someone's privacy include:

Publishing a private citizen's email address, phone number or address without their permission (publishing office information for, say, government officials is fair).

Publishing information about someone's family without their permission.

Signing up multiple accounts is not allowed

Multiple accounts are often used by those who want to avoid being banned. If we ban you temporarily, that means we want you to take a break from the site. If we ban you permanently, that means we DO NOT want you to write anything more on our site.

Be truthful

Comments that falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity will be removed. Comments that fabricate, deceive or mislead will be removed.

DO NOT infringe on copyrights

DO NOT post a comment that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party.